Thoughts on Schindler's List

Steven Spielberg didn't soften the impact when he filmed the movie. Either that, or I am too young and innocent to such brutality and cruelty. It is movies like these that made rethink my concepts of war. As it is, my perception of wars is largely based off computer games and fictional movies. Conquest always seems grand and full of wonderful victories. But after seeing a legitimate war being portrayed, war is not the glorious phenomena that I envisioned it. On the contrary, it is war that we can see the deepest level of mankind's heart, both the darkness and the light.

It is be hard to swallow the violence and discrimination that the German soldiers did towards the Jews. Of course, other groups of people were also victims, such as the Poles, Romani and homosexuals. I asked my self, how could one man treat another without remorse, respect or humanity, but instead, with superiority, dehumanisation and evil intentions? Philip Zimbardo would suggest the Lucifer effect is being carried out, which refers to how good people do bad deeds. It is hard to imagine so many people, such as the entirety of the German army under the Nazi party, being evil. However, the line between good and evil is not fixed. Good people can be seduced to cross the line. A key aspect of Zimbardo's Lucifer effect is his focus on institutional or systemic factors. He described how good people commit bad crimes under the political and legal influence of institutions. In the case of Schindler's List, the institution and system would be the Nazi party and its ideologies. It is hard to imagine hundred of thousands of Germans being evil, or the context of war changing everyone's viewpoints regarding humanity so drastically. However, the mentality of the Nazi party being casted onto its people, who viewed many other races as inferior to their Germanic race, it creates a top-down influence that ripple through the people. Zimbardo also emphasized on how evil is the exercise of power, with the intention to harm others. In all of these case, the Nazi soldiers can be seen exerting their power over others with ill intentions. Furthermore, this is escalated by the sense of deindividuation of the German soldiers. Wearing cohesive uniforms under the Nazi flag, they are now anonymous, and are not longer individuals with names, but a single German army. Loss of self-identity would lead to greater conformity to group influences.

Despite all these chaos and madness, we see one man, Oskar Schindler, who stayed good and heroic. Zimbardo talks about heroism as the antidote to evil. The same situation that brings out the evil in some, can also evoke the heroism in others. To illustrate, during the liquidation of the ghettos, the soldiers were being aggressive, randomly shooting and enjoying themselves in the process. On the contrary, Schindler was horrified, and soon decided to save the Jews, albeit through recruiting Jewish workers for his factories. There are two key components to heroism, which is to act when others are passive, and to act for others, not for yourself. In this case, Schindler stuck his head out repeatedly for the Jews, risking his life while briding and persuading the German officials, like Amon Goeth. Zimbardo also speaks about how heroes are not necessarily the traditional, societal heroes, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, because they are the exceptions, who spend their life fighting for a cause and left behind a legacy. The heroes are also not the fantasy heroes, such as Superman and Thor, because they have supernatural abilities. Instead, heroes are just ordinary, everyday people. In the case of Schindler, you may even call him a crook, a womanizer and a businessman who initially took advantage of the Jewish's plight for his own financial profit. Even so, this ordinary, everyday man, was the one who became heroic in the same situation that others became evil.

While this movie showcase the depths of human cruelty as its darkest levels, it also showed rays of hope within ordinary people. I was stunned at the absolute savagery of mankind. It was brutal to see the way they treated a fellow person. The random executions, the forced labor, the living conditions they were in. Even so, it showed light, the light of humanity. It can be seen in the hope of Jews during their hard times, where they maintain that it could not be any worse, and still move forward with hope. And of course, most notably, in a businessman and a playboy who listened to the humanity within his own heart and save lives of people at his own risk.